North Carolina Court Orders State to Specify How It Will Help "At-Risk" Students

In the latest development in North Carolina's school funding "adequacy" case, Leandro v. State, Superior Court Judge Howard Manning ordered the State Board of Education and the Department of Public Instruction to report back to him within ten days on their plan for increasing and improving educational opportunities for the students in the Hoke County school system and for those in other districts with many at-risk pupils.

He criticized state leaders for not implementing his April ruling that the state of North Carolina must provide all of its students with the opportunity for a "sound basic education," as the state constitution requires. "The State of North Carolina cannot sit back and do nothing but carp about the ineffective use of resources by (Hoke) or any other (school system)," Manning wrote on August 15, 2002, "when the ineffective use of those resources negatively impacts on the children's opportunity to obtain a sound basic education."

In 1997, the North Carolina Supreme Court declared that the state constitution "requires that all children have the opportunity for a sound basic education" and remanded the Leandro case for trial. The trial court's April ruling in favor of the plaintiffs in now being appealed by the state.

Prepared August 20, 2002